Given that the comprehensive characterization of impulsivity requires the use of a battery of instruments (Barratt, 1993; Moeller et al., 2001a), investigations into impulsivity have tended to use multiple measures, both psychometric and laboratory, performance-based tests. Accordingly, cocaine-dependent individuals have shown heightened scores on questionnaire, as well as behavioral measures of impulsivity. Specifically, studies have consistently shown that cocaine-dependent individuals have higher scores on the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS) (Moeller et al., 2002; Patkar et al., 2004); worse performance on measures of behavioral inhibition/(action restraint) such as continuous performance test (Moeller et al., 2004, 2005) and go-no-go tasks (Lane et al., 2007). Cocaine users also perform more impulsively on measures of delay-discounting involving choices between smaller, sooner rewards and larger, delayed rewards (Allen et al., 1998; Moeller et al., 2002; Petry and Casarella, 1999a). Impulsivity in cocaine users and cocaine dependents also has implications for treatment, in that higher impulsiveness is associated with poorer treatment response (Moeller et al., 2001b; Patkar et al., 2004).
